PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Friday lauded the strides made by India in aviation and aerospace and the growing role of women in the sector, while asserting that the country will spur the global aviation market. In his address after inaugurating aircraft maker Boeing’s new global engineering and technology centre campus near here, he said women were leading in the aviation and aerospace sector, be it fighter or civil aircraft. They constituted about 15 per cent of the total pilots in India, which was three times the global average. The time for women-led development has come, Modi said.

 

India, he said, has become the third major domestic aviation market in the world and, in a decade, the number of passengers will double. The ‘UDAN’ scheme has played a vital role in enhancing the domestic aviation market, the PM said. Due to the growing demand, airlines in India have ordered hundreds of aircraft. “India is set to give new energy to the global aviation market” he said.

 

Further, “we gave priority to connectivity infrastructure making India a well connected market”, Modi said. The PM also launched the Boeing Sukanya Programme. The company said the initiative aims to support the entry of more girl children from across India into the country’s growing aviation sector. The 43-acre state-of-the-art Boeing India Engineering and Technology Centre (BIETC) campus is the planemaker’s largest such investment outside the US, the company said. It has been built at a cost of Rs 1,600 crore.